While the big news on Friday may have been the delay of Sony's ertswhile console-seller LittleBigPlanet, gamers also received a curt e-mail from Sony letting them know that the terms of service for the PlayStation 3 have changed. "If you do not agree with the revised Terms of Service and User Agreement, please contact Customer Service to terminate your account(s). Otherwise, your or your Sub Account's continued use of your PLAYSTATION(R)Network accounts means you agree to the changes," the e-mail tells you. Let's dig into the new terms and see what it means for gamers. Here's a slight spoiler warning: you'll be slightly concerned.

The first section of changes says that you should be of legal age to hold the main account on the system, and children under the age of 15 should be kept to a subaccount, although Sony does take pains to say there is no way to keep certain kinds of online content away from any account. So be a good parent, dang it! When you reach "the legal age of majority," you can have your own Master account. This is standard stuff; Sony needs to make sure it can't be sued because of children seeing or hearing inappropriate things when they play online. It goes downhill from there.

Sony also has the right to keep records of anything you say or do online, or to simply listen in. "SCEA reserves the right to monitor and record any online activity and communication throughout PSN and you give SCEA your express consent to monitor and record your activities," the agreement reads. "Any data collected in this way, including the content of your communications, the time and location of your activities, your Online ID and IP address and other related information may be used by us to enforce this Agreement or protect the interests of SCEA, its users, or licensors." This is not the place to discuss your pirated copy of Resistance, in other words, or how you're planning on using custom firmware on your PSP.

Ars broke the story about the rather limiting DRM imposed on video purchases made through the PS3, and the inability to redownload your video content whenever you'd like is a big turn-off for the service. Sony has added an extra-special kick in the junk to the agreement as well, saying it has no responsibility for the data once you have downloaded it. "You bear all risk of loss for completing the download of any content and for any loss of content you have downloaded, including any loss due to a file corruption or hard drive crash.You are solely responsible for the storage and safekeeping of your content," the agreement warns. "SCEA is not responsible for providing you with replacement copies for any reason."

This makes video purchases a bad idea: you can't re-download your content if anything happens to it, and you've already agreed that Sony doesn't have to help you if their hardware goes bad. Thanks, guys. The agreement even goes so far to state that it's okay if things don't work. "No warranty is given about the quality, functionality, availability or performance of PSN, or any content offered on or through PSN... SCEA assumes no liability for any inability to purchase access to or use any content"

The other section heavily modified has to do with user-created content. With LittleBigPlanet and Guitar Hero: World Tour allowing you to create whole songs and levels respectively, Sony wants to make sure they can use whatever you create without being caught in any legal entanglements. "To the extent permitted by law, You authorize and license SCEA a royalty free and perpetual right to use, distribute, copy, modify, display, and publish your User Material for any reason without any restrictions or payments to you or any third parties," Sony explains. "You further agree that SCEA may sublicense its rights to any third party, including its affiliates and subsidiaries. You hereby waive all claims, including any moral rights, against SCEA, its affiliates and subsidiaries for SCEA or any other third party's use of User Material to the extent permitted by applicable law." You make it, they own it—done deal... according to your user agreement.

User agreements exist for one reason: to cover the company's butt in the widest and most far-reaching way possible. With the exception of the video DRM it may be a while before we see any adverse practices come from this strongly worded agreement, if we ever do at all. That said, Sony is giving gamers much to worry about.

Man, who'd have thought Sony could make Microsoft look so good? This is why I play my online games on my PC. I have a PS3 and an X360 and the X360's online experience is so much better anyway. Way to go Sony!

Yeah, this all par for the course when it comes to Sony. I used to love Sony products. But the quality has dropped dramatically and their obsessive need for control has made my decision to avoid them easy. I love my 360, except having to pay for Live.

Microsoft has made a viable online economy by staying out of "content theft" when it comes to thier online service. Look at how many games are now available online on Live for download. I can't imagine that number will do anything but increase. What happened to the promise of "you can make something then sell it on our online community". Sony's basically said anything you do on our online service is the sole property of Sony.

Well any hardware failure is virtually impossible as PS3s are invincible. Any content stealing you don't need to worry about unless you have LBP or GH:WT. Honestly, I couldn't care less about what SONY does to their T&C, because I love my PS3 so long as PSN doesn't start to cost (SUCK THOSE XBOX LIVE-ERS).

shamrok3 wrote:Well any hardware failure is virtually impossible as PS3s are invincible. Any content stealing you don't need to worry about unless you have LBP or GH:WT. Honestly, I couldn't care less about what SONY does to their T&C, because I love my PS3 so long as PSN doesn't start to cost (SUCK THOSE XBOX LIVE-ERS).

Yeap gotta agree with you on that, I love my ps3 as well. They can have all my levels in LBP I don't really care, as for downloads I rather just purchase it from the store, not too fond of purchasing digital video content anyways. They made it they can do whatever they want, just give me an awesome game to play and I'm all yours.

What does it matter if your LBP level belongs to Sony? You can't use it outside of the game unless you were to make a sidescrolling game and happen to make a level similar to what you made on LBP. What are the chances that Sony is going to find your one level out of 1,000,000 and put two and two together and sue you?